By Sean Casteel

* ·  W. Raymond Drake is little known these days, but his research into the ancient astronauts theory knows few equals. Read how the late British historian broke new ground in understanding the mysterious origins and development of humankind.

* ·  Do you think ancient astronauts are only relevant to our past? Learn some of the connections between the gods of old and our present day UFO phenomenon.

* ·   Prophecies from the Hopis and Incas are being fulfilled right before our eyes. How did the indigenous natives know the future?

* ·   W. Raymond Drake’s work preceded that of Erich von Daniken and Zechariah Sitchin. Own the new reprints of two of Drake’s classic works and see how it all began!                                    

 One of the most popular shows on cable television these days is a weekly program on the History Channel. “Ancient Aliens” is partially the brainchild of the man with the wild hair: the editor of the publication “Legendary Times,” Giorgio Tsoukalos. He is   also the U.S. representative for the writer and researcher who started it all in terms of public awareness, Erich von Daniken.

            Indeed, when one hears the words “ancient astronauts” or “ancient aliens,” most people think immediately of von Daniken and his breakthrough bestseller “Chariots of the Gods?” first published in the U.S. in 1968. While we do not seek to undervalue von Daniken’s work, it is still important for the student of the ancient astronauts theory to also factor in the work of W. Raymond Drake, the late British historian who was researching and publishing on the notion that the gods of old were visitors from outer space many years before von Daniken began to make his name for work along very similar lines.    

            So who was W.R. Drake? For one thing, he was a disciple of Charles Fort and followed in that famed researcher’s footsteps by studying in exquisite detail the writings of ancient chroniclers of the times when man had no technology of his own to speak of and so greeted the UFOs and their occupants as gods come down from heaven. In his book about the ancient Mediterranean’s strange relationship with the sky people, Drake utilized over fifty writers of antiquity and scrutinized their works through a UFO “lens.” He spent many years digging through huge archives of material, looking for anomalies that could support his theories of space aliens impacting human history. As Drake himself said, “I aspired to collect as many facts as possible from ancient literature to chronicle for the past what Charles Fort has so brilliantly done for the present century.”

 Drake wrote a dozen books on the Space Gods phenomenon, and Global Communications has recently reprinted and re-titled two of them, adding a good deal of updated material . The new books are “Alien Space Gods of Ancient Greece and Rome – Revelations of the Oracle of Delphi” and “Ancient Secrets of Mysterious America - Revealing Our True Cosmic Destiny .” The contact between man and the visitors from space has left evidence of itself behind throughout the world and influenced every race and tribe on Earth, but these two new books being offered here deal specifically with, as the titles imply, the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean  region and the Americas.  

But the new offerings from Global Communications provide more than just a reprinting of Drake’s classic works. Publisher Timothy Green Beckley has also gathered a roster of writers to input new and updated material on the stories of the ancients as well as research that has taken place in the years since Drake’s death in 1989.

 In “Alien Space Gods Of Ancient Greece And Rome - Revelations Of The Oracle Of Delphi ,” Beckley tells the story of his personal journey to see the Oracle’s ancient domicile in modern day Greece. With his good friend Penny Melis, a gifted psychic, Beckley, winded but determined, climbs the treacherous path to be right there on the scene of where the Oracle inhaled her magical vapors and babbled stories of the future for her priestly attendants to translate. The question becomes, was the Oracle an instrument of the aliens in her time? Was she something we might call a “trance channeler” today? Is there a genuine relationship between ancient methods of prophecy and the prophets of the New Age movement? A single source of information that bridges all time and space?

In any case, that’s the wide-ranging idea. We must look not only to the past to see the contact between the aliens and earlier, more primitive cultures. We must also see how that same alien contact extends into our own present times and will affect our future as well.

Which brings us to my contribution to “Alien Space Gods of Ancient Greece and Rome.” I began my chapter by talking about W.R. Drake and his contention that the gods of antiquity were not just illusionary but were instead real flesh and blood beings who emerged from the skies and made themselves right at home, as if they owned the place, which perhaps they did. The chapter also deals with UFO cases in the Greece and Rome of the present era, the point being to illustrate the parallel relationship between the gods of antiquity and the UFO phenomena of today.

This is the primary idea that is so urgent to bring forth, that we are not simply adrift in a sea of chaos and uncertainty but are instead standing on the cusp of a great deliverance. The ancient gods have not deserted us, but are as present and ubiquitous as ever, simply waiting their time to reveal themselves and offer us salvation.

A GREAT TRIBULATION?

But that salvation will not come without a price. As the “Ancient Secrets Of Mysterious America” book so clearly states, the indigenous peoples of the Americas knew full well that the times they are a’changing. I wrote a chapter for the book on the Americas in which I discuss the Incan word “pachacuti” in an interview with author Judith Bluestone Polich.

“They called the time preceding a world age shift ‘pachacuti,’” she told me. “Now, ‘pacha’ means all of the physical manifestations, and ‘cuti’ means to turn upside down. So a really tumultuous time, a time of overturning of time/space reality, always preceded a world shift. Sometimes that would take the form of catastrophic physical events in which the threads to the past were broken and so a new understanding of reality emerged. Other times it might be more of a psychic event, something that happened at a deeper, structural level, that caused reality to shift. So certainly we’re in a time of pachacuti right now, a time of very rapid change, a change of our understanding of reality.”

There are other prophets from among the indigenous Americans who tell a similar story. According to author and researcher Gary David, the Hopis of the American Southwest prophesied many future events that have since come true. Those events include the coming of the Internet, a device which allows people to communicate through “spider webs,” a reference to the World Wide Web.

The Hopis also predicted women’s liberation, saying a time would come when women would begin to dress as men. That’s something the Hopi women would never do. They always, quite conservatively, wore only long dresses. Another prophecy said that man would at some time live in the sky, which has been fulfilled by the space station and the astronauts who dwell there. They also predict a Biblical-proportioned and very bloody apocalypse, similar to what is foretold in the Book of Revelation, which David says is a curious thing because the Hopis were among the least “Christianized” of the Native American tribes, preferring to keep to their own native ways in spite of the efforts of European missionaries.

AN ANCIENT SKULL

My chapter also tells the story of the “Star Child,” a misshapen, child-sized skull found in Mexico in the late 20^th century. The skull is structured to hold more cubic centimeters of brain than a normal human skull, and has other anomalous features as well. Its current caretaker is an expert on hominoids named Lloyd Pye, and he believes the skull may be evidence of the interbreeding between aliens and human females, a phenomenon mentioned in the Bible and also in the myths of Greece and Rome and other civilizations. Pye’s story is a fascinating one and dovetails neatly with the idea of the gods returning to claim what is theirs.

Another researcher, Angela Sangster, contributed a chapter on the Kachina masks worn by some Native Americans in many of their ceremonial dances. The masks are intended to pay tribute to the gods from the sky that have intervened on their people’s behalf down through the ages, rescuing the hapless natives from floods, drought and famine and keeping a watchful eye over their civilization even now.

Joshua Shapiro, known as the Crystal Skull Explorer, explains how the centuries old crystal skulls found throughout Mexico and other locales south of the border are crucially important to our understanding of the ancient people and their interaction with the aliens. The skulls could not have been “carved” using the primitive tools and skills of the people there and were most likely, at least at first, given as a gift to the people by the aliens. Today, the skulls continue to emit a palpable psychic energy that is felt by “sensitives” and even, at times, the uninitiated.

Many of the skulls are on display in museums throughout the world and a great many are in the hands of private collectors. Shapiro recounts the personal stories of some of the people who came to own one of the skulls, demonstrating that there is a predetermined “reason” someone has a skull come into his or her life. Fate somehow decrees that a skull find its owner, and the event is in no way a random one. Shapiro owns a few skulls himself, and the book includes a bonus section of photos of the skulls along with some commentary from Beckley detailing the UFO/Crystal Skull connection.

Publisher Beckley comments on a recent UFO sightings flap in New York City that got considerable press coverage, but notes that the media did not mention a possible link between the sightings and the appearance of several Mayan elders who were in Manhattan visiting representative countries of the United Nations. They had journeyed from their homelands with 13 crystal skulls to focus on the phenomenon known as “2012.” They declared that, while the world would not end as many doomsday seers predicted, a wave of renewed spiritual values could help move our planet into a Golden Age of Enlightenment. These elders came with their skulls to energize the populace. Some 500 truth seekers from the local Edgar Cayce society attended a seminar the day before the mass UFO sightings and within two blocks – something the public and press remain unaware of.

And then there is contributor Brent Raynes, who talks about a personal mystical encounter he had after participating in a Native American “Sweat Lodge” ceremony. He feels he had a vision of the interconnectedness of the gods of old and our modern-era UFOs, among other things.

So that sums up the new material contained in the two W.R. Drake reprints. The thrust of the additional work is to help establish for the reader a continuum that links the ancient gods to our times in a joyful yet sober way. We are not alone, meaning we have help out there. The same gods who taught the ways of civilization to primitive man will also deliver that civilization from our inept misuse of it and our self-destructive ways. We as a race are not without hope, and whether we are rescued by a modern incarnation of the Greek god Zeus or a wrathful Jesus Christ, the end result of salvation will be the same.

In short, if you enjoy the television show “Ancient Aliens” and the works of von Daniken, you will want to explore these two books by W. Raymond Drake and fellow ancient astronaut authorities. Drake is a skillful writer and researcher and his exhaustively detailed examination of the alien presence in the world of ancient man knows few equals. Nothing escapes his scrutinizing eyes as he fixes his gaze upon the evidence left to our era to examine. Read Drake for the sweep of history he moves over, and read him also to find your own place in the cosmic dance of mankind through the veils of time and space.

If you would like more information on one of the books mentioned in this article simply click on its title: Alien Space Gods Of Ancient Greece And Rome - Revelations Of The Oracle Of Delphi

If you would like more information on one of the books mentioned in this article simply click on its title:Ancient Secrets of Mysterious America - Revealing Our True Cosmic Destiny

[If you enjoyed this article, read more articles and interviews at Sean Casteel’s “UFO Journalist” website at www.seancasteel.com]

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